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AWS CLI: 10 useful commands you may not know

The AWS console is certainly very well laid out and, with time, becomes very easy to use. However if you are not using the AWS CLI (Command Line Interface) from your local terminal, you may be missing out on whole lot of great functionality and speed. If you are not yet comfortable with the AWS Command Line Interface, there’s a great course on the subject available right now on Cloud Academy.

Even if you are used to the AWS CLI, I encourage you to take a look at the commands below, as you may not be completely aware of the power of the AWS CLI, and you might just end up saving yourself a whole lot of time. One important note: the precise syntax of some commands can vary between versions and packages.

1. Delete an S3 bucket and all its contents with just one command

Sometimes you may end up with a bucket full of hundreds or thousands of files that you no longer need. If you have ever had to delete a substantial number of items in S3, you know that this can be a little time consuming. The following command will delete a bucket and all of its content including directories:

aws s3 rb s3://bucket-name –force

2. Recursively copy a directory and its subfolders from your PC to Amazon S3

If you have used the S3 Console, at some stage, you’ve probably found yourself having to copy a ton of files to a bucket from your PC. It can be a little clunky at times, especially if you have multiple directory levels that need to be copied. The following AWS CLI command will make the process a little easier, as it will copy a directory and all of its sub folders from your PC to Amazon S3 to a specified region.

aws s3 cp MyFolder s3://bucket-name — recursive [–region us-west-2]

3. Display subsets of all available ec2 images

The following will display all available ec2 images, filtered to include only those built on Ubuntu (assuming, of course, that you’re working from a terminal on a Linux or Mac machine).

aws ec2 describe-images | grep ubuntu

Warning: this may take a few minutes.

4. List users in a different format

Sometimes, depending on the output format you chose as default, when you invoke long lists – like a large set of users – the display format can be a little hard to read. Including the –output parameter with, say, the table argument, will display a nice, easy-to-read table this one time without having to change your default.

aws iam list-users –output table

5. List the sizes of an S3 bucket and its contents

The following command uses JSON output to list the size of a bucket and the items stored within. This might come in handy when auditing what is taking up all your S3 storage.